Logo Logos: Get to Know the Olympic Emblems

Today's Wall Street Journal has a lovely profile of the inukshuk, the “stack of stones traditionally used by the Inuit of the arctic to mark anything from a hunting spot to a food cache” that’s doubling as the official emblem of the Vancouver games. It looks like Welker, the boxiest of the Transformers and also the most ill-meaning. Actually, the inukshuk comes from a storied lineage of thought-provoking Olympic mascots who all happen to resemble animated villains. Herewith, an annotated history of five past and future Olympic logos.

&#8226 What exactly is it?: “The lower-case logo is set in a rounded blue typeface and contains no images other than the five Olympic rings, and represents the first time an Internet domain has been part of an Olympic host city’s emblem.”

• What exactly is it?: “The stick-figure that comprises the logo looks like a lively runner or dancer and also mimics the Chinese character ‘wen’ meaning humanity (renwen) or culture (wenhua). Some experts said it also resembles the character ‘jing’ meaning the Chinese capital, or Beijing.”

• Wait, what?: “The emblem also represents the ancient Chinese art of seal-cutting which dates back 3,700 years to the Yin Dynasty.”

• Animated villainous doppelganger: The snake in Snake, in which you are your own worst enemy.

• What exactly is it?: “Torino’s architectural work of art becomes a snow montain aiming toward the top, the place where the participants of Olympics Games want to be.”

• Wait, what?: “The ice crystals not only represent the Mole Antonelliana, but they also form a web, symbol of technology and also of the connection amongst the different cultures that are united by the Olympics, even if they are rival on the snow.”

• Animated villainous doppelganger: The Bavarian flag, and, by extension, Hitler! (Hitler was Austrian, but the Nazis first rose to power in Bavaria, so.)